LA 294 
.L6 B88 
1834 




LIBRARY 

BUEEAU or EDUCATION 







/D 





STRICTURES. 



ADPBESSED TO THB 



CITIZENS OF LOUISVILLE, 

/^ ON THE 

RECENT PROCEEDINGS 



THE CITY GOVERNMENT, 



EKSPECTING 

TSS PUBLIC SCSOOL. 



BY MANN BUTLER, A. M. 

Late Principal in the Giammar Department. 



LOUISVILLE, KY. 

PRINTED BT C. SETTLE— MAIK-BTKnTi 
18S4. 






^3i 



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TO THE 



CITIZENS OF LOUISVILLE. 



Fellow Citizens: 

My connection with yowr City School has been too 
devoted and too long, to permit me to pass in silence over 
the late extraordinary measures of the city government 
respecting it, and the flattering advertisement of a com- 
mittee of the trustees. It is a regard for your interests and 
those of your children, which at all inclines, me to address, 
you on the subject; I no longer hold a situation sub- 
jecting zeal and experience to misinterpretation and the 
most mortifying disregard on the part of the munici- 
pal authority. You are deeply concemfid in the proper 
administration of the public trust, involved in the man- 
agement of the City School. No language can pour- 
tray your interests too profoundly, or with a colouring too 
deep. It is fraught with momentous consequencies to the 
morals and intellect of unborn generations. How then 
shall this important institution be managed.^ Shall it be 
by children or by men? Shall its instructions be all that 
ripened experience and zealous ability can communicate? 
or shall your teachers stand idly and mechanically over 
your children, while Mc?/ instruct one another? 

Be not startled at the broad and palpable manner in 
which the question is proposed for your serious considera- 
tion. For it is in this way, your City Council want to 



• 



manage the public school in all its branches, and in all its 
departments, that is, by monitors, essentially, if not exclu- 
sively; and not by adult and mature teachers. In proof 
of this, I submit the following resolution of the City Coun- 
cil, recently adopted upon the report of a committee com- 
posed of Messrs. Guthrie, Alsop and Shreve. This commit- 
tee reported, that '-Hhe Trustees have permitted the teachers to 
depart from the monitorial plan of teaching and they recom' 
mend the teachers be iristructed to restore the monitorial sys' 
tern in strict accordance with the ordinance.'''' 

It is mortifying to see the public business of this city 
transacted with such looseness, such want of system and 
precision, as this resolution so abundantly evinces. To 
substantiate these charges against the city legislation, it 
is only necessary to look into the ordinance of August, 
1830, M^hich, by its 9th section repeals all other ordinances 
within its purview. This ordinance happened, by the 
courtesy of a committee of council, to be referred to me; 
my draft of the ordinance had the honor of being sustain- 
ed by the committee and a majority of the council, not, 
however, without bitter opposition. 1 trust this piece of 
history respecting a city ordinance may be pardoned, un- 
der the accusatory circumstances of the occasion. 

Now the fact is, that there is not one syllable about 
monitorial instruction in the whole ordinance consisting of 
nine sections. Moreover, "the trustees are charged with 
the prosperity of the school, and for the purpose of for- 
warding it, may ruake any regulations not in contravention 
of this ordinance, which they may deem necessary" — (See 
Sec. 2.) By the. 5th section, "the trustees shall be author- 
ized to employ, with the said quarterly payments, assistant 
teachers.'''' Under the latter of these sections, assistant 
teachers have been appointed to both the other depart- 
ments, but never in the grammar department, beyond one 
hour's assistance per day in writing, which has itself been 
most injuriously withdrawn for nearly a twelvemonth. Un- 
der the former section by a regulation of the trustees, "it is 
recommended to the teachers to avail themselves of the 
assistance of their most advanced pupils, whenever it can 
h^ faithfully and judiciously applied, in order to render the 
more effectual sfervicc to the schooV This latter clause, 



which is copied from the regulations of the Boston public 
schools, is the sole foundation upon which monitorial in- 
struction has been established in our present city school, 
as in a feio grammar schools of Boston. What becomes 
now of these grave charges of the committee and approv- 
ed by the council? What is the ordinance, which has 
been departed from by the permission of the trustees and 
the practice of the teachers, as charged by the committee 
of council? What is the monitorial system, which is to 
be restored in strict accordance with the ordinance? Where 
is the system prescribed, and in what ordinance? I call 
for the letter of the law, or if no law of the kind can be 
produced, then none of that purport has been departed 
from. It would seem to me that when the Fathers of the 
city make such grave implications of dereliction in duty, 
on the part of their public agents, it behooves their dignity, 
quite as much as their justice, that they should be well 
founded. Were my lessons as a pieceptor, to be as ground- 
less as these official rebukes are unwarranted by law, I 
should expect, as I should deserve, to be cashiered with 
disgrace. I by no means wish so heavy a penalty to be 
inflicted on those legislative monitors. I am inclined to 
consider the whole matter as an instance of monitorial 
legislation^ and not to be classed among its mature speci- 
mens. You see my fellow citizens, I speak with a freedom 
becoming your interests, and my own feelings. The school- 
master, though said to be abroad, feels quite at home on 
this subject. He feels the pride of his profession at stake, 
and in its relations, and on its subjects, he claims full 
equality with the proudest of lawyers, or the most skilful 
of physicians, however humble a rank he himself may hold 
in his profession. The care of the mind requires quite as 
much skill, and is at least, quite as important as that of the 
body or the estate. When lawyers and doctors turn school 
masters, their scholars are just as likely to suffer, as in a 
contrary metamorphosis, would the clients and patients of 
a schoolmaster, converted into a medical or legal charac- 
ter. There is one profession, a higher order of instructors, 
the head of all the professions, to whose professors I read- 
ily bow, with a respect inspired by the sacred character of 
their precepts: It is the profession which teaches "peace 



6 

on earth and good vvill to man;" which points affliction 
and repentance to the joys and the consolations of a never 
ending state of blessedness, in the bosom of our God. — 
When I reflect on these holy labors of the clergyman, faith- 
ful to the duties of his consolatory and humanizing pro- 
fession, I feel some pride, that the schoolmaster has his 
agency in preparing minds for such sacred functions. Not 
that I am insensible to the value of other professions, 
or that I depreciate the holy efforts of patriot statesmen 
in defence of the liberties of their country, or the sound 
usefulness of all practical men. 

What then has been the principle of government hitherto 
pursued in the City School.^ and how far have monitors 
been employed? 

The public School began in 1829, on a modified monito- 
rial footing: It never has been conducted by monitors es- 
sentially, as now required by the Council. There were 
two teachers, one was entirely engaged in preparing moni- 
tors in the old-fashioned way, of the gray head teaching 
the young; of experience instructing youthful ignorance. 
The other of the teachers performed the comparatively 
easy task of superintending the exercises and deportment 
of the monitors at their stations, while reciting the lessons 
of their classes. In this stage, your public school was 
conducted by two teachers, and was not essentially monito- 
rial. It was then on the footing of the best grammar 
schools in the ancient and enlightened city of Boston. 
In 1830 the City Council divided the public school into 
three departments, assigning one principal to each, and 
creating a small fee for the employment of assistant teach- 
ers and other contingent expenses. In this ordinance the 
term monitorial, which had been employed in the ordinance 
of 1829, was entirely omitted. The trustees of the public 
school now endeavored to infuse as much adult instruction 
into the establishment as their funds would admit: wisely 
preferring ripeness to rawness, experience to ignorance. 
They knew that monitorial instruction wherever attempt- 
ed, with the exception perhaps of Professor Pillans in 
Edinburgh, had been confined to the more elementary stu- 
dies^ and was only to be viewed as an economical substitute 
for a system of higher and adult instruction. On this prin- 



ciple the school began ; this foundation is distinctly recog- 
nized in the account of the school drawn up by myself 
for the Trustees, and printed by them in 1830, in which it 
is avowed that "the adult teacher affords the maximum of 
instruction." It has repeatedly been recognized by the trus- 
tees, reported on to a committee of the Council so recent- 
ly as last February ; and yet, after these reiterated recog- 
nitions, the above mentioned order has been recently 
passed by the City Council. If this order means anything, 
it is to place the institution on an exclusively monitorial 
footing. 

The monitorial system has been constantly employed in 
my department in the only way that is advisable, and in 
the only way which has been approved of by the Trustees 
— namely, just so far as adult teaching could not be em- 
ployed for the discharge of the instruction. 

It has been the constant effort of the Trustees, of the 
teachers, and the most enlightened friends of the public 
school, to give it the greatest quantity of mature instruc- 
tion, that the funds of the school or of the city would ad- 
mit. Such has been the purpose of repeated reports of the 
teachers to the Trustees and of theirs to the Council. Such 
was the whole drift and aim of a report on the state of edu- 
cation in the city to the Louisville Lyceum, made by a com- 
mittee composed of Mr. Chapman (the late worthy Minister 
of the Unitarian church in this city,) Mr. Goddard, Dr. 
Powell, Dr. Harrison, Mr. Cosby and the writer of this ad- 
dress. In this report it is said, 

"Whatever Louisville may hereafter achieve in the lofty enterprize 
of public instruction, may well be attributed to the noble impulse 
communicated by the high-spirited and beneficent policy in the Coun- 
cil of 1829. It was they wholigbted up this commanding beacon, and 
opened this public shrine dedicated to the glorious services of know 
ledge and virtue. All we now want, in regard to this building, is, to 
see it adapted to the increased public wants; an improvement which 
from the actual progress of the scholars, as well as their increased 
numbers, is urgently called for. We think it wasteful to suffer the 
present capacities for education, already in the power of the City, to 
be comparatively idle, owing to the want of additional teachers and 
suitable divisions of study. The present school began with two 
teachers, devoted to about 200 scholars of the male sex, engaged in 
elementary studies — None above Grammar and Geography. It now 



8 

teaches about 350 scholars, of both sexes, employed in sereral of the 
higher and more liberal branches. Shall the public school be novr 
arrested in this course of improvement, and turned back upon its ele- 
mentary lessons? Or shall it go on, imparting higher and more 
valuable knowledge to its scholars, adequate to the hopes and wishes 
of parents and children? In this way only can it be made a subject 
of just pride and extended usefulness to our fellow citizens." 

How these efforts ought to have been received, in a free 
and intelligent community is left to the public to determine. 
How they have been received is easier to tell. They have 
been stigmatised as presumptuous, by members of the City 
government. They have sneered at them as efforts to eS' 
cape from the monitorial system. As if it were not com- 
petent for citizens, at least possessing ordinary intelligence 
to discuss a subject of public interest in a society boasting 
and justly so, of th€ freedom of its institutions. As if ex- 
ertions to improve the organization of society, by any com- 
petent minds, ought not to be hailed with a generous wel- 
come; and while their errors might be dispassionately 
pointed out, their motives should have been shielded from 
every shade of reproach. What has been the high offence 
of the Trustees of the City School.? What has been the 
neglect of the teachers for five successive years .^ What 
was the sin of the Lyceum committee.? It was to give the 
city and its rising generation the aid of all the learning 
and talents, which could be commanded in their service, 
above those, which monitors could convey. Would it be 
any benefaction to the parents and children of this com- 
munity, to give them a pauper-stricken system stamped with 
the lowest instruction, as a gracious present from a wealthy 
city? I put the question boldly and plainly to a high 
spirited people, whether they want, or will suffer their pub- 
lic agents to paralyze the public school by a mismanage- 
ment, which shall consign their noble edifice to contempt 
and insignificancy? What signifies your roomy and airy 
building, capable of ministering, nobly ministering to the 
intellectual and moral wants of a thousand children, if it is 
starved in competent adult instructors? To fill such an ed- 
ifice with child-instructors of children would be worse than 
mockery. It would be a cruel waste of public opportuni- 
ties and public treasure. Nothing but the most imperious 



9 

necessity could for a moment justify a course produetiv* of 
such disgrace and of ruin to the best prospects of the pub- 
lic school. Does this necessity exist? If the funds of the 
city can not justify a more liberal and extended organiza- 
tion of the city school, why not raise its very small Jees, to 
some moderate standard, still greatly short of those for 
private instruction? The money would go to animate the 
public establishment, and to fill the solitudes of its great 
rooms with a cohipetent number of teachers, and a neces- 
sary result — with overflowing scholars. 

But the mode of filling up the generous design of the 
Council of 1829 may be well left, to the financial ability of 
the City Council. Yet, fellow citizens, have it filled up, at 
all events; be not satisfied with mere monitorial teaching. 
No longer suffer the school of your own property, in which 
you have staked nearly ^"^ 10,000, to continue of walls with- 
out a sufficient number of teachers to retain the public con- 
fidence or to deserve it, by carrying forward the institution 
to greater heights of usefulness. Bricks and mortar are a 
wretched substitute for a full, active corps of teachers ; such 
an one might, under the animation of a proper spirit, carry 
your noble institution from advancement to advancement, 
till it should become at once a favorite object of pride and 
a wide spread blessing to your flourishing city, I have fond- 
ly hoped for years, and have flattered myself under many 
privations and eff"orts, that public sympathy would at 
length arouse from its apathy, and impel the city authority 
to more vigorous and liberal measures. 

But its friends have been scowled upon, the representa- 
tions of its trustees have been unheeded or rebuked; the 
remonstrances of its teachers for efficient aid for your ser- 
vice, have been illiberally attributed to a desire of per- 
sonal ease in them and of lessening the activity of their own 
duties. Till at length at "one fell swoop," every feature 
of liberal instruction, every thing which exempts it from 
the character of a pauper school, every thing which has 
deserved and received the public confidence, is threatened 
with destruction. 

If, fellow citizens, you are satisfied with this mismanage- 
ment of your valuable concerns, you have the power to do 
so, however your moral right may be questioned. You 

B 



10 

^Wn however, hear the warning voice of a parting friend, 
in jour ears. Every deterioration of the public school will 
put more fees into the private schools. Every inferiority 
in the teachers, the plan of instruction or the course of 
studies in the public school, to those of private establish- 
ments, will fill them with scholars. My professional inte- 
rest dictates a silent acquiescence in this murderous policy, 
which is to consign your public school to contempt, and 
convert it into an asylum for the ill-starred children of 
poverty alone. But I scorn to be governed by such sordid 
<5onsiderations, at the expense of ^owr important interests. 
I have experienced too many obligations at your hands, to 
treat you so ungratefully. Prompted by this community 
of feeling, 1 conjure you to arouse from indifference to a sub- 
ject of so much social consequence. Take the vital inte- 
rest of city education into your own guardianship, and suf- 
fer not yojir noble institution to be surrendered to child-in- 
structors with one adult inspector rather than teacher, in 
rooms capable of accommodating two or three i^undred 
scholars in each, of three capacious stories. The public 
school has been reeling under the frowns of the City 
Council, for the last eighteen months. Save it from the 
dislike, or the indifference of the rich and powerful, who 
may be opposed to it, because they have no personal want 
of its aids. Take pattern after the noble people of Bos- 
ton, whose public schools of the higher order, may well be 
denominated, city colleges, all officered by efficient adult 
teachers, not taught by monitors. Require your city estab- 
lishment to be put into full and vigorous operation, and no 
Jonger allow its ample capacities to lie idle and go to 
waste, owing to a mistaken economy; if a severer name be 
not more applicable, to such neglect of public benefits and 
opportunities of social good. 

If, however, children are to supercede men in the instruc- 
tions of the City School, by all means let us make thorough 
work in this great intellectual and moral revolution. Let 
the grave and reverend seniors of the bar and the bench 
come down from their proud heights of learning and acute- 
ness, and give way to the unfledged striplings, who are just 
learning to flutter about their libraries, and who can 
scarcely distinguish between Coke and Croke. Away 



with the "lucnbrationes viginti annorum," the study of a life. 
Let the doctors too, learned in books, and still more learned 
in living disease, make way for the raw students, who have 
just learned to distinguish one bone from another; but who 
are yet uninitiated iti the beauties and the natural glories 
of their philosophical profession. But, fellow citizens, to 
come home to your bosoms and firesides, when child-instruc- 
tors shall supercede grown and adult teachers, then it will 
be equally proper to take your apprentices from their work 
shops and their benches, and place them over the business 
of society, instead of the master workmen. 

If one profession is to be inverted contrary to the dic- 
tates of all good sense, let us make the confusion worse 
confounded,, and the hope is, that out of such moral chaos, 
society will sooner be restored to its natural order and 
subordination. Then years may again claim the privilege 
of their experience and devotion, to qualify their possessors 
for the service of society. 

But I should fall short of my task, if 1 were not to lay be- 
fore you my views respecting the best organization of your 
public school. I beg leave to xefpr you to a report to the 
Louisville Lyceum, already mentioned. It was deliberate- 
ly weighed by a committee of gentlemen having claims to 
your consideration, very superior to my humble expecta- 
tions. A few words respecting the nature of monitorial in- 
struction, must finish my address. Education, it should 
not be forgotten, consists much more in bringing out the 
faculties of scholar^s,. and teaching them how to employ 
their own mental powers in the investigation and applica- 
tion of truth, than- in communicating a given quantity of 
learning. By the former method, the child becomes self- 
poised and trained to enter the lists of exertion with his 
fellows. By the latter, he is kept in the rear- of other 
men's thoughts: still these two objects constitute the es- 
sence and marrow of education, and the mode of accom- 
plishing them, presents a subordinate and inferior con- 
sideration. In teaching, a thousand occasions arising out 
of the character, the temper of the ,scholar,,the nature of 
the subject — call for a tact and illustration, which can 
only come from ripe experience. Monitorial instruction is 
therefore a substitute for adult teaching, always intrinsically 



12 

inferior to it. It is only admissible as an economical suc- 
ceclaneum for the lessons of ripened and adult preceptors, 
and barely admissible in the simplest lessons and under 
vigilant, mature superintendence, and never without two 
adults at least to each room. In this light, it was presented 
by the Trustees of the City School in their account of your 
establishmei t, in 1830. In this, they confess the superiority 
of the instructions of adult preceptors. Such have been the 
views of five bodies of trustees, for five successive years, 
composed of some of your most discreet and intelligent 
fellow citizens. Nor were any other thought of, until the 
new lights, which have been shed on the subject by the 
learned professors in the city council. Are you prepared 
to act upon these new doctrines, so repugnant to your most 
valuable trustees, the feelings of our most respectable citi- 
zens, (I do not mean rich ones) and the conviction of the 
most experienced teachers; confirmed too by all the ac- 
tual working of the City School in its monitorial opera- 
tions. Are you disposed to have your children taught 
upon these raw, imperfect and unproductive doctrines as 
they are, when applied to any of the higher branches of 
education. Or shall nothing but the poorest elements be 
taught in your noble and spacious building? With you is 
the answer, and with you is the course of conduct, which 
you shall deem necessary to rescue your city establishment 
from final degradation and comparative nothingness. 

To illustrate those truths, allow me to point your atten- 
tion to the noble institution, with which the piety of the 
catholic Sisters of Charity has adorned your city. In the 
exemplary devotion of this noble sisterhood, whose most 
pious labors, are at once both an honor to religion and a 
blessing to society, you have a practical illustration of the 
difference in numerous establishments, (as pubjic schools 
must be to afford extended usefulness) between mature 
adult instructors, and those of monitors, however carefully 
superintended they may be. And I predict, that if you 
permit the City Council to surrender your public school 
mainly or essentially to monitors, the noble charity of the 
catholic ladies will eclipse it so totally, that but few years 
more will see it employed for the purposes of education at 
all. 



13 

Not that I, an unworthy pupil of the venerable and ex- 
cellent Bishop of Bardstown, can whisper a word against 
his ancient church — the church of Fenelon, of Pascal and 
Bossuet; nor do I. But while I sympathize with the pros- 
perity of the catholic efforts to enlighten society; yet, as a 
patriot, I desire such exertions to emanate from our public 
councils, for the good of all the children of the republic, 
whether protestant or catholic. I want to see the good 
work proceed from the government of all, rather than from 
the sanctuary of any church. Yet I fear, the zeal of sec- 
tarian activity will be lost upon us; and that our efforts 
are but too likely, amid the public indifference, to turn out 
like other contests between raw militia, against disciplined 
forces. 

What but the higher instructions, conveyed in my own 
and in the female department, have commanded the confi- 
dence of thoso^of our fellow citizens, who could well send 
their children elsewhere. 

This parsimony of mature instruction, has blasted the 
public schools of Philadelphia with the blight of pau- 
perism, and the complaint has been constant, that the 
clever lads were always leaving them, so soon as they 
could render acceptable service in the schools. 

To save the public school of Louisville from this degra- 
ding operation, to elevate it in usefulness, to make it a 
benefaction worthy of being a present from a generous 
and enlightened community, to its less fortunate fellow- 
citizens; and in fine, to place your school in the same rank 
with the glorious establishments of high-spirited Boston, 
has been the favorite object of my heart. The hope of 
such a result has been the consolation for no little labours, 
mortifications and rebuffs, in the public service. 

I have now done, I have fought my fight; and if you fel- 
low citizens, will not take up the cause of your own school ; 
if you will not battle for its improvement, as a great moral 
and intellectual legacy for your children and the children 
of your country, 1 am content. 1 may sigh over the degra- 
dation of an institution of mighty capacities of social 
good, if properly administered ; but it is equally the lesson 
of necessity and of patriotism, for individual will to ac- 
quiesce in the determinations of the majority of society. 



/ 



14 



I return to private labours in a profession, to whose im- 
provement and duties I have devoted my life. I fear not 
the full compensation of some experience and some zeal 
in my humble way, quite equal to the munificence of the 
Council of Louisville. 



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